End Of A Footie Era - Looking Back Over The Past Six Months In Football
“Don’t cry for me Argentina, the truth is I never left you”
Not strictly true in either sense seeing as I’ve never been to Argentina in the first place and that I am actually leaving The Footie, for the record, I just like the quote.
It’s been a rollercoaster six months since my first post back at the start of March with some old gubbins about Rafa Benitez pledging allegiance to Liverpool and who would have guessed at the storm of controversy we’ve all helped whip up in the time since then.
We’ve had Rafa tasting his own medicine of sorts, Rafa digging his heels in and me personally catching pelters from our English readers for suggesting that I didn’t want Ledley King to go to the World Cup so that he would be fresh and injury free for Spurs come the new season. Given his great return on Saturday against Manchester United I feel completely vindicated in my belief :-)
We discussed the sendings off of Luis Garcia and Hayden Mullins and whether they should have been banned or given special dispensation for the FA Cup Final (they weren’t allowed off as it happens) and I got a lovely picture of Chelsea’s new kit as modelled by Arjen Robben which didn’t amuse Chelsea fans as much as it amused me. Story of my time here actually.
We talked about salary caps in May when Michael Ballack joined the Russians in West London and my whole footballing life flashed before my eyes as Spurs cocked up fourth place on the last day of the season in the midsts of the Lasagne-Gate affair, in obviously the lowest point of an otherwise relatively successful season, for the club I did little to hide my affection for. May did bring one joyous evening though as Barcelona came from behind to beat Arsenal in the Champion’s League final and while I celebrated and taunted the Gooners, some of them didn’t take it too kindly. Ha ha.
June brought the World Cup and the beginning of my mammoth World Cup reviews that went down like a lead balloon on The Footie with a readership obviously more used to me shooting my mouth off than actually using facts, figures and premonitions to see where the trophy would end up. I have to admit that I never would have thought Italy would be able to go all the way but that shows just how much I know.
We also saw Frank Lampard in a Barcelona kit but by then the Fat Frank jibes were wearing a little thin (unlike Frank….)
The actual World Cup was pretty much a borefest of rubbish football and overtired media stereotyping and xenophobic jingoism, luckily we had the Wayne Rooney metatarsal story to keep us all awake (yawn) and then the glorious demise of England as Rooney got himself sent off. Worth all of the newspaper inches was it Wayne?
Once the World Cup boredom was over we got back into the real deal of club football and the transfer window with yours truly raising a storm of Arsenal abuse (again) for having a pop at Sol Campbell leaving Arsenal. I can’t believe I even typed his full name there, another sign I’m going soft and reason enough to hand this torch over to someone else.
Since then it’s been Shevchenko’s badge kissing exploits, Freddie Shepherd deluding himself about how big a club Newcastle are
, Newcastle fans defending Jean Alain Boumsong (whatever next!), Stuart Pearce defending the indefensible in Ben Thatcher’s elbow attack on Pedro Mendes and almost finally a last dig at Chelsea, Arsenal and William Gallas as he threatened to score an own goal if selected for the league champions. Woooh, it’s been a long six months!
For my part I’ve enjoyed (nearly) every minute of my time on The Footie but all good things have to come to an end, especially my time here before the frequent rants and conjecture completely alienate all of you loyal readers not of a Spurs persuasion! I won’t do a Halle Berry Oscars speech but I would like to thank my previous Channel Editor Aaron for his help and support, the latest unfortunate in the job, Scott, who I know will make the b5media Sports Channel as successful as he himself has been in his sporting career, all of the guys at b5media especially Jeremy for giving me the opportunity to write for The Footie in the first place (this is turning into an Oscars speech so I apologise) and most of all the readers who came back and had some banter and chat with me in my time here, we may not have seen eye to eye but I’ll always respect any football fan who defends their team even when they are indefensible. That to me is being a real football fan and with that I’ll sign off.
Alan
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5 opinions for End Of A Footie Era - Looking Back Over The Past Six Months In Football
Sack the Juggler
Sep 12, 2006 at 9:00 am
Alan,
only caught the end of your short career but thought you produced some great articles with just the right amount of banter to wind up the various fans. Intelligently written with a mixture wit and barbed comments - Scotty has a lot to live up to!
Cheers mate,
Sack the Juggler
Alan
Sep 12, 2006 at 9:11 am
Thank you very much STJ, do you mind if I quote that on my CV in future? ;-)
Seriously though, I’m gutted to be leaving The Footie but commitments in other areas have forced a cull of some work and while winding up football fans should never be considered work, this had to go.
I’ll still be telling it like it is (sort of) on http://www.stateofthegame.co.uk which I run so my wit(!) won’t be lost completely to the online football world, I can hear the sighs of disappointment ring out from Ashburton Grove to Stamford Bridge to St. James Park.
I should have said above that Sports Channel Editor, Scott, is considering new writers for The Footie so if anyone fancies a shot email me at alan@b5media.com and I’ll pass your name along. You’ve been rather eloquent yourself STJ in your comments on here, maybe you’d fancy it?
Thanks again for the kind comments.
AH
Milo Riano
Sep 12, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Oh men, I really feel sad to see you go. The sports channel would not be the same without you…
Anyways, thanks for all those posts and more power.
Alan
Sep 12, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Thanks Milo, I’ll still be hanging around b5, just cutting back on a few things I’ve been doing.
See you on the internal forums!
charltonfan
Sep 12, 2006 at 9:37 pm
Tis sad to see you go. You’re probably the only Spurs fan I could possibly tolerate, the rest were a rowdy bunch with a serious compuslsive jealousy of the Arse.
Anyhoo, hope to read “The state of the game”
What team does this Scotty support. Please don’t let be West Ham.
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